Lot 682
Plato
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
The works of Plato, viz his fifty-five dialogues, and twelve epistles, tanslated from the Greek; nine of the dialogues by the late Flower Sydenham, and the remainder by Thomas Taylor. London: printed for Thomas Taylor, 1804. First edition, 5 volumes, 4to., without half titles, 1 plate in volume 1, contemporary half calf, marbled boards, covers detached from all but volume 3, occasional light spotting or foxing (5)
Footnote
Note: Lownders 1877; Raine & Mills Taylor, p. 525
While it is known that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelly and Peacock owned Taylor's books, the reading public for his works must have been small, and much of their ideas and contents diseminated through discussion and by reaading reviews. In the case of his Plato, further limitations were placed by the bulk of the edition, which had been printed under the patronage of Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk, being bought up by that eccentric peer and kept locked up by him, before being eventually sold off in 1848.
Provenance: With the bookplate of Thomas South and autograph of A.J. & M. Atwood.